Implementing artistic vision
There were major difficulties to overcome. The artist's vision was clearly and forcefully presented, but the fountain project required many professional skills and technologies. No one had ever tackled the problems involved in displaying digital video through thick glass surfaces, perfectly matched in timing and placement to the disbursement of water from fountain jets. One of the private donors, a member of the School of the Art Institute’s board of directors, promoted the idea of faculty and students helping Plensa execute his artistic vision. John Manning, in Art and Technology, and Alan Labb, of the Photography department, developed the proposal. Soon, the school joined about a dozen contractors that would plan and construct the glass fountains displaying a changing array of Chicagoans’ faces.
Creating video for exceptional venues
The fountain towers’ height posed distinct challenges. Very dense image data was essential to retaining clarity in the extremely large images to be displayed. Manning, who tested a wide variety of cameras, settled on the most modern high-definition video camcorder available. The rectangular shape of the towers required an image more elongated than most human faces. All the subjects’ eyes had to be positioned on the tower at identical heights while their mouths had to precisely match the location of each tower’s water jet. Manning developed a template for elongating all faces to match the tower parameters. In an attempt to modify faces to fit the parameters, Manning and Plensa took test footage to a production house. After experts there struggled to dramatically stretch the faces with conventional editing tools, Manning tried his hand. He turned to Adobe® After Effects® – and within minutes, he had achieved the required effect.
There was still more testing to be done. The artist had not determined the length of time each face would be displayed. Manning shot videos of subjects – appearing from one to 20 minutes – for review. Plensa chose a 13-minute interval for each subject, but Manning needed a way to shoot more compact footage to reduce costs. He designed an 80-second shoot for each subject, using After Effects to create looping video that lengthened the display without increasing the amount of data. “This project would have been impossible without After Effects,” Manning noted.
Enlisting student power
Manning and his colleague, Labb, recruited 20 students from the Film/Video, Photography, and Art and Technology departments to provide production assistance, directing, lighting, shooting, and post-production work. Manning hired a professional videographer to train the students to use the high-end camera and to suggest the best lighting schemes. Labb hired a professional director to coach students on effective video direction. Next, student teams began to coordinate and shoot video of more than a thousand Chicagoans representing a diverse ethnicity. The students also shot water scenes that alternate with the faces. The video-processing team went to work, following the 230 steps in After Effects that Manning had developed for sizing, color correction, and timing of the video clips.
Learning real-world skills
The students gained valuable experience using high-tech cameras, directing hundreds of people, and editing video with Adobe tools. They learned to work at high levels of precision and to produce consistent results required in commercial video.
The fountain – featuring a few of the subjects – was unveiled to the public in July 2004. Manning and his students continue to work on the video archive of 1,000 different faces. Soon, the Millennium Park mosaic of Chicago’s diverse population will be complete.
